Seven links

I don't usually participate in these memes, but I thought I'd take the 7 Link Challenge (thanks, Kirsten). These answers aren't necessarily authoritative since I've written over a thousand posts and can't be bothered to go back and look at all of them except in special circumstances.

1. Your first post: The World of Stuff Opens, April 6, 2003.
2. A post you enjoyed writing the most: [sic]. You could say I started writing this one in junior high, when I would keep track of my teachers' many slips of the tongue. In the post, I listed some of my favorites.
3. A post which had a great discussion: Tough one. We usually don't have those around here. The discussion on Brain Damage went on for a while, though.
4. A post on someone else's blog that you wish you'd written: That would have to be The Ultimate "0.999… = 1" Guide over at Greatplay.net.
5. Your most helpful post: My Sony DSC-H55 Digital Camera Review seems to have helped a fair number of people so far.
6. A post with a title that you are proud of: Man, what post title am I not proud of? Half the time they're clever as hell. Sometimes I think of them ages in advance. I was going through some old titles, and this one made me chuckle: A Turtle (And Also the Meaning of Life).
7. A post you wish more people had read: Any post with no comments. Seriously, I think if my every post generated a huge discussion, it would compel me to write more often. Not that I don't write a lot, but I used to write more often than I do now. One post I like that seemed to go under everyone's radar was By the Way... It brings back a lot of memories for me.

I guess this post should be called "Nine Links" because here are TWO MORE LINKS!!

Here are some Useless Fliers. (Via waxy.org)

Here's a pretty extensive article about the guy Nintendo named Mario after.

Let them eat cake (and let me eat pie)

You know what I have done in a while? Some Ask Jordon!

Kate: What are the main problems of the US, which really affect people's lives and need to be solved as soon as possible, in your opinion?

Well, we finally got universal health care (or health insurance, or whatever), so check that one off the list. I'll admit that I'm having a hard time thinking of other things. A lot of the things I care about don't have a direct impact on people's lives.

Are they still giving tax cuts to rich people? If they are, that's going to have to stop. If anyone needs tax cuts, it's the people who, you know, have nothing.

Eh. I don't know. Obesity, maybe? We have a lot of fat people here. But there's not much you can do about that. You can tell people that they ought to exercise, but you can't drop them onto a treadmill and make them run all day. You can tell them they should eat more vegetables, but you can't tie them up and force-feed them brussels sprouts. And anyway, it doesn't bother me that other people are eating however they want, and it shouldn't. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg, as they say.

I hate brussels sprouts, by the way. I would empathize.

So, I guess I don't really have a good answer to your question.

Kate: What do you like most for dessert? :)

What don't I like for dessert? I'll eat pretty much anything. That said, I like pies. I think pecan pie is my favorite. My mom made one for my birthday, and it was great. Blueberry pie is also good too.

I had no idea green screens were used so much in TV and movies. Here's a four-minute video showing many a green screen scene. (Via The Presurfer)

Some guy spent 24 hours in a Super Walmart. (Before you get too confused, he replaces profanity with other random words.) (Via The Consumerist)

How the classes are going

Two summers ago, I stayed home and hung out with friends. Last summer, I went to Europe. But if I want to graduate in Spring 2011 while taking a relatively light course load along the way (which I do), then I have to take a summer semester (which I am doing now).

Here at old Florida, there are three summer semesters. Summer A is six weeks long. Summer B, which follows Summer A, is also six weeks long. Summer C spans both Summer A and Summer B. I took Intro to Public Speaking during Summer A, and during Summer C, I'm taking Operating Systems and Finance. Summer A has ended, so the latter two classes are the ones I have left.

Summer course offerings are more limited than during the Spring or Fall semesters, so for my computer science major, I had no choice but to take Operating Systems with one of the department's more infamous professors. He claims that the average score on his exams is 60%, which includes 20% extra credit. He also gives lots of homework, and he's just assigned the term project.

The flipside, as I've been told by my friends who have survived his classes, is that you learn a lot from him. And I seem to be doing just that. I didn't think I would do very well on the first exam, but I got a 77 (which I first misread as 11, my mind precluding the possibility of such a "high" grade). The next exam is on Tuesday night, which also happens to be my birthday. I hope the exam makes it a good one.

The other class I'm taking right now is for my business administration minor. It's Finance (properly, Business Finance), and it's one of the classes that the business college has done a great job with. They record the lectures and post them online, so there's no need to actually attend class. Instead, I download the lectures and watch them at my leisure. The quizzes are also online (but the exams, alas, are not).

I chose to be a business minor because it would give me valuable skills (and because my major requires me to take a minor, but never mind), and this class hasn't disappointed me. I've learned, among other things, the importance of saving for retirement. Plus, I've been doing very well in the class. The way things are going, I could end up with an A. Yay.

I was actually very worried that I wouldn't do well in either of these classes (Finance is said to be the hardest class in the business minor), but I've been busting my hump for them, and it shows. I just hope I can keep up the good work.

I've been linking to a lot of infographics lately, some good, some not so good. Here's a parody of pointless infographics. (Via waxy.org)

Another one of those montages of clips from movies and TV shows: We've Got Company! I first saw this before watching Avatar and groaned upon hearing the line in the movie. (Via The Presurfer)

Stupid Fight compares the spelling and grammar of celebrity Twitterers' fans to see whose are dumber. (Via waxy.org)

New house

I'm coming off the tail end of a long Fourth of July weekend. I guess I've never thought about it, but it seems that we get a long Fourth of July weekend more often than not: whenever the day falls on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. That's a majority of days! (This is the first July I've ever gone to school, which is why I've never realized it before.)

On Saturday, Andy and I went to a fireworks show on campus. As we got there, it was drizzling, and the community orchestra had just started playing the national anthem. When they finished, it was raining harder, so we turned around and left. We had dinner at a Singaporean restaurant called Merlion before going back home. I hadn't been to one since I was in Berlin last year. Good stuff!

This weekend, my parents were looking at houses in the area (since they've sold theirs). On Sunday, I met up with them, and they took me and my grandmother to see the one they liked the most. They called the real estate agent, who let us in to look around. It's a portable, but it doesn't look like one inside (or outside, for that matter). An enclosed porch has been added on in front. It's sort of secluded, with tall trees and stuff all around. It's near Fort White (pop. 531) and the Santa Fe River, so my dad would still be able to go boating.

Today, my parents told me that their offer on the house had been accepted. Within a month, the place will be ours. Well, I'll have a room there, but I don't know if I'll make it my permanent residence after college or what. That's something I've been trying to think about. I'm graduating in less than a year, but it seems like a long way off.

Vittana is similar to Kiva in that it allows you to make microloans to people around the world. The difference is that with Vittana, the loans are used to help people go to college. I can't vouch for the service, but it's a cool idea.

I wish all my lectures were as interesting as this April Fool's Day prank. (via waxy.org)

Here are some fun facts about Nintendo in cheesy infographic form. (Via The Presurfer)

Attack of the parasites!

A few months ago, my sooth-seeking friend Andy took in a stray cat. He named him Tucker and kept him in his bedroom in our apartment. I would go in once in a while and see Tucker there. He was affectionate but unfortunately never very healthy. After about a month, Andy and his vet decided to let Tucker go to the great scratching post in the sky.

Three weeks later, Andy and his friend Scott, who was visiting, discovered that Tucker had left something to remember him by: fleas.

They took swift action, vacuuming and flea-bombing Andy's room and the living room. They asked if they should do my room too. I said not to worry about it. Mistake of the Century. Shortly after that, I said:

Andy and Scott left on Wednesday, and I've been alone in the apartment. It hasn't been so great, but not for the reasons I would have expected. I'll go into that later.

I was left to fend off the fleas by myself. On Thursday afternoon, I went to the front office to ask for pest control to come, and I was told that they only come on Thursdays and that I had just missed them. Andy, who took responsibility for the whole situation, gave the office a call and got the pest control people to maybe come on Monday.

It was a long weekend. I called a vet's office, and they said to put Borax onto the carpet and vacuum a week later, but I couldn't find Borax at the grocery store. (Is that something you can get at the grocery store? I don't want to waste my time again.) I did buy some insecticide for fleas, and it seemed to get rid of them after a few days of spraying. I also did some vacuuming to (hopefully) get rid of the flea eggs.

I don't like spraying chemicals all over the place. It's not due so much to my concern for the environment as it is to my tendency to accidentally spray myself (which did happen, as usual). So I made a flea trap by setting a bowl of soapy water on the floor and angling a desk lamp over it. Fleas are attracted to heat (this ordeal has made me a damn flea expert), so they jump toward the light bulb and fall into the water, where they get stuck. It's also a fire hazard, so don't try this at home. I won't do it again.

Needless to say in a world where "yes" means "maybe" and "maybe" means "no," pest control didn't come on Monday. They called me on Tuesday and asked if the whole place had been vacuumed up because apparently they wouldn't even come if it weren't. I said no and asked them to come on Wednesday. They didn't. They were definitely supposed to come on Thursday, as usual, but they didn't even appear then. They finally showed up on Friday, but by then they could tell I had already gotten rid of the fleas, so they didn't do anything.

(Before you say anything: no money was lost here. The management of my apartment complex hires said company to do free pest control work for residents. We had considered hiring another company, but it would have been too expensive.)

I haven't seen any fleas in five days, so I think they're gone for now. Then again, they hid for at least three weeks, between the time Tucker died and the time anyone noticed them. Hopefully they're not like an STD that pops up from time to time and can never go away. I'll have to do some more vacuuming.

This is why software is awesome. Someone wrote a Python script that does some time-stretching and -compressing on a song to change the beat. The result: everything swings. Sample tracks include "Every Breath You Take," "Enter Sandman," "Around the World," and "Don't Stop Believin'." (Via waxy.org)

Here's a breakdown of cable subscription fees by network, showing how much you're paying for channels you don't watch. (Via The Consumerist)

American kids don't have a monopoly on stupidity: 10% of British children surveyed thought that the Queen invented the telephone. Some also thought that Luke Skywalker was the first person on the moon and that Isaac Newton discovered fire.

The sensational student-semester

In the spring, I took a class called Introduction to Software Engineering. The main assignment over the course of the semester was a group project to design, create, and present a software application. Sound like fun?

The class had four discussion sections, which made it only natural that each discussion section should correspond to a group. The groups were about evenly distributed, each one having 16 or 17 people. In my group, we spent several weeks hashing out ideas for what kind of program to make.

I would talk about the ongoing project to my friend Mark, who had taken the class previously. When he first heard about it, he was shocked. "Seventeen people? That's going to be way too many. You need two or three people." Or, you know, something like that. I'm not a journalist, jeez.

I wasn't really sure what he meant. I figured that with a lot of work, two or three people could complete a project on the scale of what we were doing, but with more people on the team, it would be easier for everyone.

Our group eventually decided on an instant messaging application for Android phones. The app would be designed specifically for our fellow UF students; each user would see a map of the campus with their buddies' current locations marked. Users would also be able to create and invite their friends to events, which would also be shown on the map. The name of the program: ChompChat. The alligator-themed wordplay is inescapable around here.

We basically split ourselves into two teams: the client team, which would make the actual ChompChat application, and the server team, which would be responsible for handling interactions between users. After a while, the server team got something that worked, and the client team got something that worked. The hard part was getting them to work together.

Some of our other assignments for the class involved reading Fred Brooks' The Mythical Man-Month, a classic text of software engineering. The titular essay explains that people and time aren't interchangeable. As more people join a project, proportionally less work gets done because the new members have to learn the ropes and each member has to communicate with more people to figure out what's going on. It's summed up as Brooks' law:

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

In the meantime, I had a hard time finding a place for myself in the project. We were using Google Wave to communicate (we had several big Google fans in the group), and not everyone was in on every wave. We had our own Trac installation set up for us, but no one ever filed any tickets.

I got most of my information from our weekly class meetings, and even then, I couldn't help but bounce around from subteam to subteam, looking for something to do as the strong-willed and more technically able actually did most of the work. It got to the point where I decided to hold off from the development lest Brooks' law come into play. Other members of the group agreed that this was a good idea.

When it came time for the groups to present their software projects, we had just gotten the client and the server to communicate with each other. Chatting and creating events worked, but geolocation and the other features we had originally dreamed up for ChompChat were absent. I felt as though the ghost of Fred Brooks were there in the room, laughing to himself. Actually, I didn't because he's still alive. But whatever.

Fred Brooks was right. Mark was right. And everyone else came around. Toward the end of the semester, the professor took a poll of the class, and almost everybody agreed that the groups should have been smaller. Too bad it took so much manpower to figure that out.

Statistics reveal America's "beer belly," where bars outnumber grocery stores. (Via The Consumerist)

This might be fun if you like math: an inverse graphing calculator that produces the corresponding equation for a curve that you draw. (Via J-Walk Blog)

This 1995 Newsweek article reads like satire in 2010: "The Internet? Bah!" A Newsweek blogger provides a modern commentary and manages to get a word from the author.

Summer bummer

My break between the spring and summer semesters is history. I did some stuff, took it easy, and then figured I would write about it once I got back to school. Well, I haven't had time. I've just got a little bit of time here to squeeze in a quick post.

So, Thursday was my friend Nick's much-anticipated 21st birthday. He and our friend TJ started out by shooting some golf, but they called it a day early because it was so hot out. After that, they picked me up, and we had lunch at Clamsters, a neighborhood place.

Next, we went to The Home Depot. Yeah, that's right. Let me explain.

The last time I was around, my friends had caught wind of the Red Bull Flugtag, which would be coming to Miami in July. My understanding is that it's a contest where various groups build flying contraptions that may or may not be airworthy but are always fun to watch. In Miami, this would involve shoving your craft over the edge of a dock, with a pilot inside, and seeing how far it goes.

So, my friends decided to enter the contest. Since each group is apparently supposed to have a theme, they planned to dress up as the members of Kiss and have their airplane thing look like a guitar. (I can't help but think that Role Models may have been an influence.) But anyway, to everyone's surprise, including their own, they were accepted into the contest. So they've been getting ready to build their giant guitar thing.

So, after considering various types of lumber, we went to see their friend Jonnie as he moved out of his dorm room at FAU. Then the guys signed some Flugtag paperwork, we moved Jonnie's stuff into Nick's house, Nick's cousin Mike had his long hair cut short, and we had dinner with Nick, who was now old enough to drink. To top off the day, we went to Bru's Room, a local bar/restaurant, so Nick and the other over-21s could have some more drinks.

The next evening, Nick had a party, and there were a lot of people there. And the day after that was Sunday, so I had to go back and get ready for another exciting semester. I'll fill you in on that later.

By all accounts, Google Chrome is fast. Here's a pretty cool video (that you may have already seen making the rounds on the Internet) showing just how fast it can be. Be sure to watch the making-of video as well. (Via waxy.org)

Get the best deal

I've been living in my apartment since August, and it's getting to be (or has already been) that time when you're supposed to renew your lease or find another place. Since I've been pretty satisfied, I decided I would renew my lease for next year.

Andy and Ryan, two of my roommates, were a little less sure; they both wanted to move closer to campus. Ryan ended up finding another place, but Andy is more likely to stay with me next year. (My other roommate will be graduating and moving out, I think.)

Last year, we signed early and got punished for it because the rates plummeted later. Our rate is $449 per month, but if we had waited a few months, it could have been $299. I was gambling that the same thing would happen this year, so I decided to hold out for the best deal possible. A few months ago, I could have renewed with a rate of $348 and gotten a Visa gift card that would essentially drop the rate to $299. But it wasn't really $299, so I decided to wait some more.

The incentive program ended, the rate didn't go down, and the renewal deadline (for keeping your same apartment) was drawing near. What could we do to get the best deal? I decided that we should bargain.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a pool-party-slash-barbecue to promote renewals. Uniformed representatives were going around, asking people if they were going to renew their leases. One guy asked Andy and me what it would take for us to renew. I mentioned a comparable place I had heard of that was within walking distance to campus and was $290 per month, so that would be the price to beat. I also thought it would be nice to get new kitchen appliances for free. He made a note of it.

Last week, the rate still hadn't fallen, but they started another incentive program, giving out Visa gift cards that would essentially lower the rate to $330. Even if we couldn't strike a bargain, I thought, it would be a good deal.

On Tuesday, Andy and I went to the office and talked to a manager about possibly negotiating a more favorable price. She refused, saying it was against their policy. So much for that idea.

Right after that, I renewed my lease to take advantage of the Visa gift card deal. $330 is pretty reasonable.

No matter what they end up doing, Andy's and Ryan's current leases expire in August, and they'll pretty much be spending the summer at their respective homes. Our other roommate's lease runs out very soon, I think, and he (and his girlfriend who's shacked up with him) will be moving out.

That should leave me with the whole place to myself for a few months as I take summer classes. I'm not really sure how I feel about that. I'm not depressed by it, but I'm just kind of concerned about being bored. Any ideas on how to not be bored?

This video is a collection of infomercial clichés: a tribute to doing it wrong. The soundtrack is appropriate. (Via The Consumerist)

I personally find it terrifying that some people are this big into Jeopardy!, but here you go: an archive with details of every episode ever, including the questions and answers. (Via J-Walk Blog)

Here's a look back at 20 years of Adobe Photoshop. Includes screenshots!

Sony DSC-H55 digital camera review

When I got my last camera, I was 14 and John Kerry was running for president. I chose a camera with a rather generous 4 megapixels and 3x optical zoom, and I got a 128 MiB memory card so I could take a whopping 64 photos at a time... or almost 6 minutes of 640x480 video at 16 frames per second! Best of all, it only cost $300 ($338 in 2009 dollars).

How times have changed. After barely surviving a trip through Europe in my pocket last year, my beloved Sony DSC-P73 conked out in January as its refusal to read memory cards spread like a cancer to my last one. Clearly, it was time for an upgrade.

(Disclaimer: I'm not a photography expert, just an ordinary dude.)

I originally decided to go for the new Sony DSC-HX5V, but when I found out about the more affordable DSC-H55, I decided to wait until it came out in April. Recently, I ordered it from Amazon ($238.66) along with an SD card (finally, new Sony cameras support them), and I got them in the mail on Thursday.

So here's the skinny. The H55 has 14 megapixels and can shoot 720p video (1280x720, which is considered HD) at 30 frames per second. It has a 25-mm wide-angle lens and 10x optical zoom (which you can use while shooting video!). It also offers manual controls, which is a must for me because sometimes I can pick out better (or more creative) settings than the camera can.

I thought I wouldn't like the hand-holding features, like automatic scene selection and image stabilization, but they've turned out to be pretty handy in producing great photos and videos, respectively. Automatic orientation is cool too, even though probably every camera has had that for years. Oh, and I can set the time zone, so I won't have to update the clock twice a year. Again, probably something that every camera has had for a while.

Video shooting is one of the first features I tried out. It's as good as I could possibly hope for. The manual warns that the sound of the lens zooming in and out will be recorded, but in my limited experience, it's usually silent. I never took too many videos with my old camera, but since the quality is so good (and Linux video editing software is coming into its own), that will probably change now that I have this one.

As a technical note, videos are saved in the MP4 format. I prefer it to QuickTime, which I've seen some cameras use. Also, my 2:11 test video weighs in at 142 MiB (yes, I'm using IEC binary prefixes now because they're unambiguous), so consider that if you're thinking about buying a new memory card.

Aside from the video, my favorite feature has to be the wide-angle lens, which gets a lot more stuff into the shot than I'm used to. Here I've gotten a floor and a ceiling with four stories between them:

Not only can I get wider shots, but the 10x zoom lets me take narrower shots. That means I can take better pictures of things I don't want to get close to, like this alligator with a football in its mouth (seen here tightly cropped and at half the actual size):

The camera treats colors well. The automatic white balance does a good job of correcting for different types of light, like the incandescent bulb in my bedroom, whose light my old camera would leave as orange. The H55 is also kind to sunlight, as seen in this late-afternoon photo of the historic Florida Gym (which I've uploaded to Wikimedia Commons):

This camera isn't perfect. It seems pretty slow between shots (roughly 5 seconds, even with a Class 6 SD card), and it forces you to review each photo after you take it (maybe to help the time pass?). But there is burst mode, in which you can take up to five full-size photos in rapid succession. Also, I haven't noticed any speed-related problems when recording HD video, so I don't think the memory card is the issue.

I'd also read in reviews that the camera responds poorly to low light. That is correct. If it's at night and there aren't super-bright lights (or the camera's flash) around, you're going to see some noise, which ends up looking splotchy as the camera tries to smooth it over. It looks like one of those crappy Photoshop filters. To illustrate, here's a detail from a photo taken with automatic settings. (The splotchiness is still noticeable if the photo is scaled down further.)

There's one other thing that annoys me. There are some decals on the front of the camera that advertise the features, and they don't seem to come off.

Those are about the only faults I can find with the camera. I'm happy with it overall. It takes fantastic photos if there's more than a little bit of light. If I need to do some shooting at night and I can use the flash or set a long exposure, I will. For example, here's a 10-second exposure at night:

Not bad, I'd say.

Installapalooza

I talked about my Thursday, but I didn't get a chance to mention my weekend yet. It was... interesting.

For many college students, the weekend begins on Thursday, and the people living in the apartment below me are no exception. They had a party on Thursday night. I don't mind if people have parties, but I do mind if said parties are extremely loud and preventing me from going to sleep. Usually I go downstairs with my roommate Andy and we ask them to turn the music down, but this time, Andy volunteered to go by himself. He didn't come back; he had joined the party.

On Friday night, there was another loud party downstairs. A normal person probably would have been able to sleep through it, but I have a hard time getting to sleep unless it's quiet. Still, I thought I should try. I did sleep for a little while, but the noise woke me up at 4:30 in the morning. That's when I called the police.

Over the next hour or so, the noise still didn't go away. At 6:00, I went downstairs and told one of the guys that if they didn't turn the music down, I would call the police. He asked if I already had, so presumably some officers had paid them a visit. I said I hadn't called, and he said that that the party was ending anyway. A half an hour later, the music stopped, and I instantly went to sleep.

I probably won't call the police again. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now they probably know that I did it, and I don't want them to be mad at me. There are more of them than me, after all, and they know where I live.

I always wake up early, even if I go to bed very late, so I wasn't worried about oversleeping. Imagine my surprise when I woke up well-rested at 11:15 in the morning. I was supposed to be on campus at 11:30 for a Linux installfest!

Technically, I didn't quite oversleep, but I came very close to it. The only time I actually did oversleep was about a year and a half ago when I was supposed to be giving a presentation for a class. Why do I only oversleep (or almost oversleep) when I have to do something important? Well, I guess if it's not important, then you're not really oversleeping.

My friend Mark, who was going to give me a ride to campus, had been waiting outside for a few minutes. I got ready as fast as I could, and we weren't too late. The installfest actually went pretty well, and we had a pretty good turnout. I helped a guy dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows, and Mark got a guy's graphics driver working. There was also a lot of food, and we got to take home what was left over.

Know Your Meme is indispensable. If you've seen the one with the old-fashioned painting of a guy striking a non-old-fashioned pose and saying things like "It feels most outstandingly pleasant to be involved in gang-related activities," the site explains what that's all about. (Via waxy.org)

British humor: How to Report the News, presented in the style of a news report. (Via waxy.org)

Do you use Last.fm? HacKey will show you the musical keys of your favorite songs. Apparently a whole 18% of my favorite songs are in B major, which I thought wasn't a common key in popular music (well, it's hard to play on the guitar). (Via waxy.org)